1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to cargo transfer systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems for transferring cargo between ocean-going vessels and land destinations or ocean-going vessels and barges or between ocean-going vessels, barges, and landside terminals, and including direct transfer from barges to rail without storing the goods landside.
2. General Background of the Invention
At present large container vessels provide economies of scale by carrying very large numbers of intermodal containers and container derivative devices such as flat racks and open tops containers. Such large ships today carry more than 6000 twenty foot equivalent units (TEU) and still larger ocean-going vessels are foreseen. The containers carried by these large vessels are generated by several regional ports spread geographically over areas such as South East Asia, UK/North Europe or a US coastal region. This requires the large vessel to either make multiple port calls, some times once to discharge and later to double back to load, or by using a port in the region as a hub port where the large vessel proceeds to a landside terminal, from which containers are both landed for local distribution and transshipped to feeder vessels or barges and/or to trucks or rail cars, for distribution to other port destinations. The terminal operation required at landside hub ports is extensive and costly involving trucking from quay to storage in stacks and load out in a reverse operation at later dates to on carrying vessels.
Typically, import containers discharged from a large carrier vessel at a landside terminal are hauled from the dock side to stacked storage on the back side of the terminal or placed on wheeled chassis and parked for later haul back to cranes for loading to feeder vessels or to rail cars at distant sidings or transferred to trucks for delivery to other ports or inland locations.
Outbound containers are received at a landside terminal from rail sidings, often at remote locations or from drays and long haul trucks or feeder vessels and assembled on the backside of the terminal awaiting the arrival and readiness of the large carrier to load. Hundreds of acres of land are required for such operations in addition to the several handling operations involved.
The critical matter of road and rail infrastructure required for landside terminals to accommodate large vessels can take decades to develop and billions of dollars in cost. Environmental issues may also intervene. In Vietnam, a jack-up causeway was used to unload containers from ships. The causeway was used as a dock where trucks took the containers as they were unloaded and hauled away.
The Freeport Sulphur mine is a series of jack-up barges strung together.
Cranes for transferring containers from ships include gantry cranes and boom cranes.
The following patents documents are incorporated herein by reference:
U.S. Pat. Nos. 969,164; 1,193,587; 1,237,573; 1,346,068; 1,547,536; 2,308,743; 3,149,733; 3,183,676; 3,290,007; 3,367,119; 3,586,152; 3,606,251; 3,750,210; 3,945,450; 3,958,106; 3,967,457; 4,310,277; 4,363,411; 4,417,664; 4,456,404; 4,465,012; 4,482,272; 4,505,616; 4,544,137; 4,547,857; 4,568,232; 4,589,799; 4,627,768; 4,632,622; 4,652,177; 4,666,341; 4,678,165; 4,722,640; 4,762,456; 4,813,814; 4,916,999; 5,028,194; 5,139,366; 5,224,798; 5,456,560; 5,478,181; 5,515,982; 5,580,189; 5,733,092; 5,797,703; 5,807,029; DE 455 495; DE 1 079 299; DE 25 43 156; FR 588,542; GB 17,349; and all patent documents mentioned herein.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,762,456 discloses a cargo container loading and unloading operation where a floating crane is used to transfer containers between deep draft ships and shallow draft ships.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,363,411 (see col. 3, lines 44-53) discloses a loading/unloading crane system that is placed between the ocean and a lagoon to handle deep draft and shallow draft ships at the same time.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,465,012 discloses a floating crane transshipment device to accommodate movement of cargo between ships and barges.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,568,232 discloses a floating horizontal boom bulk unloader that allows shallow draft ships to be loaded and unloaded from a deep draft ship.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,310,277; 4,457,85; 4,544,137; 4,632,622; and 5,028,194 disclose cargo transfer systems supported on open sea platforms with one or more cranes.